My own private Achilles hell

I ruptured my left AT on July 27, 2009, ultimately had four surgeries the last of which was May 20, 2010. Last Thursday my 20 year old son and I began a 39.4 mile backpack trip from the East Fork Boulder River south of Big Timber, MT through the Beartooth Absaroka Wilderness and into Yellowstone National Park, ending at the Slough Creek Campground. It was a hard trip that included, we think, a total of seven water crossings without benefit of bridges, several miles of trail that required scrambling over and around dozens of trees that were blown down during a serious windstorm last winter and mosquitoes that were worse than we encountered in Alaska when we went there. But the views were spectacular and the solitude was amazing. We didn’t see a single person for two days. Even though we went through country noted for a very healthy grizzly bear population we saw only two black bears, from behind as they ran away from us. We saw lots of grizzly scat including some that was only a few hours old since it still had flies on it. We did see a badger and a red fox very close up as well as a lot of frogs in one area, some osprey and a few deer. No elk or bison. We also saw lots of trout since we fly fished along Slough Creek. It was truly the trip of a lifetime and even though my left leg is not nearly as strong as it was before the ATR, we managed a pretty good pace, about 2.3 miles per hour carrying backpacks. I was prepared with Valium and Percodan just in case I needed some pain management but it was never necessary.
We got to the campground on Monday where we met my wife, also his mother. We celebrated by having dinner at the Roosevelt Lodge where I consumed a Deschutes Black Butte Porter and a half-pound elk burger with bacon and blue cheese. My son consumed a couple of cokes and an identical burger. The food was actually quite good there.  Then we headed back to the campground for the night and left the following morning to go get my car and return home to Billings, MT.

We took the photo by balancing the camera on a rock at the top of the drainage divide between Slough Creek and East Fork Boulder River, just about 10 miles into the trip.  My son takes after his maternal grandfather in the height department.  And in case you’re wondering what that black thing is across my chest, that is my bear spray in case we had a confrontation.  My son also has one right behind his right hand.